There is more evidence, daily, of the onset of Global Warming. July was the hottest year Ever. Glaciers are melting, Plankton in the oceans are dying. Droughts in some places, floods in others. There is much talk about it and still naysayers, but nothing yet is being done to slow it down.
In spite of Obama talking about Green Energy and some breakthroughs on electric cars and wind and solar power, it seems to be moving in slow motion. Even our Senate keeps putting the Energy Bill on the back burner. Even though investing in new energy would help our economy and put people back to work. Plus we have the GOP Party of No with many naysayers hindering the bill’s passage. From the AP:
US inaction on climate troubles global talks
AMSTERDAM – The failure of a climate bill in the U.S. Senate is likely to weigh heavily on international negotiations that begin Monday on a new agreement to control global warming.
The decision to strike the bill from the Senate’s immediate agenda has deepened the distrust among poor countries about the intentions of United States and other industrial countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions that power their wealthy economies but risk causing the Earth to dangerously overheat, say climate activists.
A split between rich and poor nations has characterized the talks since they began 2 1/2 years ago, but it widened after the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate summit last December that fell short of any binding agreement and produced only a brief document of political intentions.
The withdrawal of the bill to cap U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prominent gas blamed for global warming, “plays into the same old fault lines,” said Kelly Dent, of Oxfam International. It has let down developing countries that had looked to President Barack Obama’s administration to seize the leadership in climate negotiations, she said Sunday from Bonn, Germany.
Delegations from most of the 194 participating nations begin a five-day negotiating session in Bonn on Monday that is one of the last meetings before another decisive conference convenes at the end of the year in Cancun, Mexico. One more weeklong round of talks is scheduled for October in China.
The two keys to any agreement are commitments by rich countries to cut emissions and their pledges to fund poor countries’ actions to adapt to climate changes affecting agriculture and the frequency of extreme weather events like floods and drought.
So far, Washington has not backed away from its promise at Copenhagen to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next 10 years. But even that pledge, made more doubtful now by legislative inertia, has been roundly criticized as inadequate. More at link
From Reuters:
Ten key indicators show global warming “undeniable”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Melting glaciers, more humid air and eight other key indicators show that global warming is undeniable, scientists said on Wednesday, citing a new comprehensive review of the last decade of climate data.
Without addressing why this is happening, the researchers said there was no doubt that every decade on Earth since the 1980s has been hotter than the previous one, and that the planet has been warming for the last half-century.
This confirms the findings of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which reported in 2007 with 90 percent certainty that climate change is occurring. The IPCC also said that human activities contribute to this phenomenon.
The new report was released after U.S. Senate Democrats delayed any possible legislation to curb climate change until September at the earliest. Prospects for U.S. climate change legislation this year are considered slim.
Released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as “The 2009 State of the Climate Report,” the new report draws on the work of 303 scientists from 48 countries, including data from last year.
The 10 key planet-wide indicators of a warming climate identified by the report are:
– Higher temperatures over land
– Higher temperatures over oceans
– Higher ocean heat content
– Higher near-surface air temperatures (temperatures in the troposphere, where Earth’s weather occurs)
– Higher humidity
– Higher sea surface temperatures
– Higher sea levels
– Less sea ice
– Less snow cover
– Shrinking glaciers
The seven indicators expected to rise in a warming world rose over the last decade, the report said; the three indicators expected to decline did so over that same period.
With an almost daily flood of data on climate change, Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in Asheville, North Carolina, saw the need for a comprehensive look at the information to pick the most obvious signs of planetary warming.
“These are indicators from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean that we would expect to be changing in a warming world,” Thorne said at a telephone briefing for reporters.
“Each indicator is changing as we would expect if the world truly were warming,” he said. “Not a single analysis disagrees that the global climate is changing. The bottom line conclusion that the world’s been warming is simply undeniable.”
The entire report can be seen online at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009.php
It’s past time to take this on as a serious issue. Write your Representatives and definitely your Senators to act soon on a Good Bill to start a campaign to combat Global Warming and climate Change.
comes ashore, but those could increase to as much as 110 mph if it strengthened to a Category 2.
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